I've often been annoyed to log on 15 minutes before raid time, wait around, only to discover that I'm not going at all that night, tough breaks, but you've been to the last two weeks', so give someone else a turn. Which is fine, I understand in a 10-man guild with more than 10 raiders, there's some inevitable rotation. What I don't like is logging on, forsaking an evening's schedule, to then not raid at all.
The system I came up with (read: shamelessly stole from other, more successful guilds) was a pre-determined attendance roster. Basically it works in two steps: raiding times are posted at least a week in advance, and raiders sign up.Then, a few days before that week's adventures, sign ups are closed and the officer(s) in charge hammer out who goes and who sits.
There's still going to be times when someone can't come; that's the pitfall of over recruiting. But at least people know where they stand, and can plan their time accordingly. My guild used this system in T9 content and it worked swimmingly; we've gotten lazy now, and it's a real shame.
But, a challenger appears! I call it the Golden Ten, or Twenty Five, if you're an asshole, system. Basically, there are two kinds of raiders in this guild: the Golden Ten, and the schlubs. The Golden Ten are the ten best raiders, and will be taken over anyone else; the logic is that with the same ten going every week, progression will be speedier, gear more concentrated, etc. If one or more of the Ten do not make it to raid on time, however, their spots are filled that night with schlubs. Guild leadership can change up the Golden Ten roster once a month, for any number of reasons (lack of attendance, poor performance, drama queen elimination).
Now, you'd expect me to defend the attendance roster system rabidly and be shaken with the elitism of the GT system, but I'm not. Nocturne has always been a good-natured guild, centered on fairness, low drama, and a friendly tone. For a guild more centered around progression and performance, GT is ideal. It is unfriendly to newcomers, true, but all the schlub needs is their "big break" and they can be assured a golden ticket as long as they keep their game in top form. They only thing GT requires to work is a core of people with very good attendance (one of AR's strengths is handling complex scheduling difficulties) and an impartial guild leadership. GT and loot council seem like good bedfellows, since they both need responsible leaders to make them work.
At any rate, those are two of my ideas on handling the common guild question, "Who comes to raid tonight?" Hope you enjoyed it.
I wouldn't say that things went "swimmingly" by any means and I certainly wouldn't attribute the way we do invites to laziness now.
ReplyDeleteWe had enormous difficulty at the end of the ToC era transitioning to ICC where people would say they would show up and then simply not. When people don't show up when they say they will, it makes giving advance notice virtually impossible.
For us, it started out working very well at the beginning of ToC to have the week's roster set in advance. Then people started being sketchy and a couple people started being put on standby each week where they didn't know for sure if they were raiding because we couldn't say with certainty whether people would no-show. By the time ICC rolled around it had just become meaningless to post the roster in advance because it didn't resemble the raid we got on any given night.
However I do very much agree that it is complete bullshit to clear a night of your week, log on and then not get a raid invite. Certainly its worth addressing again and re-evaluating regularly.
Clearly we need to start using DKP and leveling penalties for no-showing without notice: it is the only way. But loot systems are a post for a different day.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, do you like my new weekend update schedule? I DID IT FOR YOU, POOHZANIBEAR!
I do like it! I always want to see you post more!
ReplyDeleteLike I said, I find when I force myself to post I get really shitty posts that I am ashamed of. I've also been in a weird living spot for the last two months, but it's finally settled down and the weekends are looking like a good time to write.
ReplyDeleteI'ma try to get back into weekly posting. Now that I'm back on it I find no shortage of ideas, which is very good.
The predetermined roster system wins, hands down. It gives everyone the information they need to plan their raiding and other activities well in advance. Everyone knows where they stand, no one is disappointed, guild business trucks merrily along.
ReplyDeleteThe Golden Ten system is unnecessarily divisive, doesn’t avoid many of the same problems as the sign-up potluck program, and is borderline sadistic to boot. Oh, it works well enough if in fact your guild is neatly split into the Golden Children and the schlubs, in which case divisiveness is already covered. But if you’ve got seven freakin’ amazing DPS in your guild, two of them are going to be perpetually rewarded for working their asses off by being called a schlub and not raiding. Because in any ranked system, no matter how good you are someone is going to be at the bottom, and in this system that could turn a difference of a couple hundred DPS into an insurmountable gulf between raiding king and lowly peasant.
And say you are #11 in a Golden Ten system; for additional kicks, let’s say you’re pure DPS. Every single week you show up to raids you know you probably won’t get to run just in case someone flakes. Some of those weeks you show up only to watch raid get cancelled anyway because they’re short a tank or healer, and there’s not a damn thing your faithful hunter can do about it. If you want to PUG a group – and you’d better, if you want to be in anything resembling good raiding form – you’re restricted to whatever dregs are left on Mondays, because the rest of the week you’re obligated to your own guild to be available if they need you – and if the lead actress breaks her ankle when you’re off and saved to another ID, you’ve just inconvenienced the very elite you’re trying to score points with. If you are available and you do get to go, what happens when you’re pulled in for bosses you’ve never seen before, because the few PUGs you have been able to scrape into haven’t made it past the first wing of the instance? There you are, in your scrubby gear, missing the steps that everyone else has had down for weeks just for lack of experience. Next week the person you replaced shows back up and guess what, they’re back in and you’re out, and you never really had a chance at all. Why fool yourself?
The Golden Ten system probably works super for the folks ranked 1-10, but anyone ranked 11+ is better off finding another guild or going guildless; you’re just as likely to get a Big Break with any old ten-man guild who plucks you out of LFG as you are this hypothetical Golden Team, and you’ll get to do more raiding in the meantime which will, gasp, make you a better raider. Meanwhile the elite still have to deal with the inherent problems of pugging people to fill gaps (since their schlub guildies may have gotten saved elsewhere and/or may not actually be better than other folks floating around LFG) or cancelling raids due to lack of participation if the wrong people happen to be absent.
I like the roster system best, but I’d still take the sign-up potluck than the Golden Ten system. I know I used to complain constantly about having my evenings ruined due to getting benched, but since I’ve found more to do in the game, that’s come to bother me a lot less – an evening not raiding can be spent leveling alts, joining a BC raid, roleplaying or flailing comedically out in the battlegrounds. Now I only get annoyed at the realization that being benched for Sindy means I’ll have to PUG her later on because none of my guildies will ever go back. ;-)
GT isn't about people's feelings, it's about progression. If your goal is to make everyone in the guild feel good, then yeah, it's horrible. But if you're serious about progression, GT is a fine system that focuses on clearing content.
ReplyDeleteThere's no winners or losers, it's all about priorities. Many guild leaders de facto use GT anyway, what's wrong with making it explicit?
I don't even think it works well for progression, as your second-string isn't getting the gear or experience neccessary to be effective substitutes. Add in the fact that any second-stringer who's actually a decent raider isn't going to put up with being a designated schlub week after week (i.e., not raiding), and you're left with people who aren't good enough to get in anywhere else, don't have the gear to mitigate their lack of skill, and are probably so insecure in general that they wouldn't be effective raiders anyway. At that point a progression-minded guild is almost better off grabbing a replacement out of LFG, where they're more likely to find a geared alt or a main benched from their regular raid. At worst they'll get someone as bad as their leftover schlubs, and they've lost nothing.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who fairly consistently dings the low end of the meters in Recount, I don't mind being passed over for people who do better DPS on progression nights. Well okay, I'm bitterly disappointed, but I understand, and I accept it because I want to see Nocturne succeed more than I want to personally tank Arthas' Persian rug. And in Nocturne I have confidence that some other night I will get the chance to go in and work on my skills, gear up etc., because my guildies are also interested in my success. In the goblinish system you're describing, a player like me -- decent, but not exceptional -- or even just someone who learns better by doing, wouldn't have that support. And so it's not a guild I'd stick around with. I suppose there's two ways you could look at that -- one, it's meaningless to the progression guild, because a schlub is a schlub. Or two, the guild's progression is subtly hindered, because that's one less decent second-stringer they can call on when the Golden Ten come up short... and without a good second string on those nights, they'll either wipe all night or simply cancel, and either way they're not progressing.
If you're going to use GT anyway then making it explicit is absolutely the way to go -- saves everyone time and some people drama. But I still think it's an inefficient system. A second-string that's ignored until needed isn't going to perform the way you need it to, if it's there when you need it at all.